


Computational Semantics 101

by Daisiestdaisy (Doyle)



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Jealousy, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 15:13:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4268058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doyle/pseuds/Daisiestdaisy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Dinesh was utterly neutral, an uninterested Switzerland in this roommate relationship drama. Richard would tell him he meant ‘disinterested’,  but he knew what he was about.</i> Jared's on a date with Monica, Richard's not jealous, and his colleagues are helpful and supportive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Computational Semantics 101

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SexuallyMonsterous (Alli_Bialystock)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alli_Bialystock/gifts).



> SexuallyMonsterous speculated about [Monica befriending Jared after his breakdown in front of her the night before TechCrunch](http://sexuallymonsterous.tumblr.com/post/123094739416/i-friend-ship-monica-and-jared-so-hard), and I had to wonder how Richard would interpret that.

On Richard’s fourth jittery circuit of the house – workspace, window, bedroom, kitchen, back to the window – Dinesh said, “Would you please sit?”

He did, sitting down in his usual place but not turning on his laptop, and when he sighed Dinesh realized what he might just have let himself in for. He’d meant ‘sit and work, or play a game, or browse for sad pornography to take back to your bunkbed so long as you keep it discreet’, not ‘please, friend, regale me with why you’re moping around the house’.

“Super busy today,” he said, keeping his eyes trained on the screen. Actually, he’d stopped for lunch a half hour ago and right now he was trawling the TNG page on TV Tropes, but that was still a thousand times more important and relevant than whatever Richard’s problem was.

“Cool, yeah,” Richard said. “Yeah, me too.” A blatant lie. “There’s a ton still to do for CES.”

“That _is_ true. Maybe you could make a start on some of it. Just to get ahead. Take any task you want from the Scrum board.”

“I don’t want to mess with Jared’s system. And I’d ask him, but I can’t. Because he’s out.” Richard clicked his tongue. “Out with Monica. They’re getting lunch together.”

“You know, I thought they might be? My first clue was when he was walking out the door and said ‘I’ll be back later, I’m meeting Monica for lunch’.” And some other instructions about what they needed to work on today, but Dinesh had tuned those out.

“That’s three times this month.”

“Okay.”

“Every Tuesday.”

“Don’t really keep track of Jared’s social schedule.”

“It just seems like they’ve been spending a lot of time together since TechCrunch.”

“Mm.” He pitched the noise evenly, not agreeing, not disagreeing. He was utterly neutral, an uninterested Switzerland in this roommate relationship drama. Richard would tell him he meant ‘disinterested’, but he knew what he was about.

“What do you think they even talk about?”

“Definitely you,” Dinesh said and Jesus, Richard fucking _nodded,_ like he’d just had his suspicions confirmed. “Or literally anything else in the world. Richard, stop obsessing and go stalk them on social media like a normal person.”

Gilfoyle came out of the kitchen with a bowl of cereal and tossed Dinesh the packet of chips he’d asked for ten minutes ago, the lazy Canadian dick. “Jared’s on a date with Monica, Richard’s jealous,” Dinesh filled him in.

“Okay. I don’t care about any of that.”

“Right?”

“It’s not a date,” Richard said. “It’s just lunch. One of them would have told me if they were dating. Why would they not tell me that?”

Gilfoyle said, “Maybe they thought you’d be weird and obsessive about it and piss off your roommates.”

“Jared _is_ pretty thoughtful like that,” Dinesh agreed.

“Probably what Monica sees in him.”

“That makes sense to me. I was thinking some kind of height-slash-anxiety fetish?”

Gilfoyle tipped his head, considering. “So she’s into tall men and anxious ones, or they have to be both?”

“Both.” He mimed two overlapping circles with his thumbs and forefingers. “Like a Venn diagram. So you’ve got Erlich over here – tall, but not anxious – and Richard on the right, anxious but not tall.”

“He’s taller than you.”

“Right, but ‘tall’ is, like, six-two or above.”

“So by your definition, a man who’s six foot one isn’t tall.”

“I’m just saying, you need to draw the line somewhere, and it’s always going to be some arbitrary point.”

“Hmm.” Gilfoyle said, “Jared’s tall by any metric, though.”

“And definitely anxious, so...” He made the circles again with his fingers. “Right in the sweet spot.”

“They’re not dating,” Richard said, apparently receiving their half of the conversation on some kind of time delay despite being two feet away. “Raviga has this whole policy about co-worker dating. Monica told me.”

“Huh,” Dinesh said. “That’s probably why they started hanging out right after Raviga pulled our funding. Or maybe that was a Peter Gregory rule and Laurie doesn’t care.”

“Yeah, the CEO of a company’s got more important shit to deal with than who their employees are dating.”

That sailed right over Richard’s head. He was chewing on his thumbnail now – gross – and while he looked perpetually worried these days, there was an anxious line between his eyes that made Dinesh finally take pity on him. “Richard, please listen to yourself. You’re jealous of _Jared_. Think about whatever romantic life-choices have led you to this point, and take any steps necessary to undo them.”

The noise Richard made was probably meant to be a disbelieving laugh. “Uh, no. No way. That’s – I’m not – Monica already... anyway, um, it’s actually ‘envious’. You mean I’m envious of Jared, which I’m not.”

Dinesh looked at him over the top of his screen, and blinked with deliberate slowness in the hope that Richard might be gone when he opened his eyes again. It wasn’t to be. Historically, Richard had never been great at distinguishing the silence that meant ‘I’m giving you my full attention, so please keep providing this fascinating information’ from the one that meant ‘for both our sakes, stop talking and I’ll ignore whatever just came out of your mouth’.

“Because envious would mean I want something Jared has, but if I was jealous of Jared I’d be mad at Monica for taking Jared away from me.”

“Don’t try to school me,” Dinesh said. “My English is as good as yours, asshole. I meant what I meant. Sorry if you’re not ready to admit that to yourself yet.”

“Somebody had to say it some time,” Gilfoyle said.

Richard was flushed, eyes darting back and forth between the two of them, and if he was going to throw up Dinesh hoped he had the decency to move away from the computers first.

“Maybe this is something you and Jared need to sit down and talk about in private,” Dinesh said kindly.

“Ask him if we should have one of those co-worker dating policies.”

“I...” Richard shoved his chair back. “I’ll be in my room.”

He was only halfway there when he spun on his heel and came back. “You’re wrong, by the way. I’ve never even thought... Doesn’t matter. You’re just wrong.”

The second time he made it out of the room before deciding to grace them with his presence again. “Don’t say anything about this. To Jared and Monica. Or Erlich. Or, just, anybody. But especially Jared. Please.”

When his bedroom door was finally closed, and some sad indie song was playing from inside, Gilfoyle asked, “ _Was_ that what you meant?”

“God, no. No clue about that envy-jealousy thing. I totally thought it was Monica he was into, what the fuck?”

“Yeah. Huh.” They contemplated that in silence for a second, which was frankly as much time as Dinesh wanted to devote to thinking about Richard’s love interests, heterosexual or otherwise, then Gilfoyle sat down at his keyboard. “Ten bucks says that height/anxiety fetish is a real thing.”

“You’re on.”


End file.
